Two ongoing fears come to mind this morning with regards to my life’s work.
- People will think my work is crazy.
- I won’t be able to articulate my work.
What I realize is that these fears arise due to questions of trust.
- I need to trust that the right people will resonate with my work.
- I need to trust that the right words will come at the right time from the ocean of wisdom within me and I don’t need to force it or control it.
To put this another way, my perceived problem isn’t an issue of articulation. It’s an issue of resonance.
In other words, my words will resonate with the right people. It’s not about articulating them in the right way.
This was proven this week when I few days ago my wife bumped into a friend of hers and they began talking about the issues surrounding the teaching profession which my wife has just retired from.
When asked by her friend what I do, I explained that my work related to the struggles that they were going through and I explained some aspects of it, such as mindsets, which, surprising to me, resonated with her quite a bit.
She then went on to say that the school system should hire me because I seemed to be aware and knowledgeable about these issues.
I explained to her that the school system wouldn’t hire me (or anyone like me) because they aren’t ready to change. This is evident in how they are trying to control teachers and staff more and more because they believe that by taking more control, they’ll be able to stop the breakdown of the system.
This is the same thing that’s happening to a lot of people in the private sector as well.
But the paradox is that the more the heads of the school system try to “take control” of the situation, the more they are actually worsening and speeding up its collapse and breakdown.
Afterwords, when reflecting upon this encounter with my wife’s friend, it got me wondering if my role wasn’t to help organizations to transform (which I’ve intuited for some time) but rather individuals (or perhaps communities of individuals).
Why? Because it seems more and more like the very people who are the most primed and ready to hear what I have to say and seem to resonate with it the most, are the individuals within the organizations rather than the management or “leadership” teams.
So unlike conventional change agents who traditionally work from the top down, I have this feeling and intuition that I’m supposed to be helping people from the bottom up in some way.
How I’m not exactly sure.